For years, they have boasted of the health benefits of their leafy diets, but now vegetarians have the proof that has so far eluded them: when it comes to cancer risks, they have the edge on carnivores.

Fresh evidence from the largest study to date to investigate dietary habits and cancer has concluded that vegetarians are 45% less likely to develop cancer of the blood than meat eaters and are 12% less likely to develop cancer overall.

The article continues later:

In 2005, the Epic study, funded by the Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK and the International Agency for Research on Cancer, concluded that eating just two portions of red meat a day – the equivalent of a bacon sandwich and a fillet steak – increased the risk of bowel cancer by 35%. It found that eating fibre, in the form of vegetables, fruit and wholegrain cereals, lessened the risk of cancer and that fish, eaten at least every other day, was also protective.

Annette Pinner, chief executive of the Vegetarian Society, said: “It is widely recognised that a third of cancers are directly related to diet and what’s interesting in this study is the findings on blood cancers. We wouldn’t claim vegetarianism is a panacea for cancer but it is a step in the right direction.”

The full article can be found here at The Guardian. The actual study is available as a PDF from Nature.com.

Further reading:

• The Spiritual Benefits of a Vegetarian Diet.
• Questions and Answers on Vegetarianism.

In the last sutra Patanjali outlined the five basic vrittis: right knowledge, wrong knowledge, fancy, sleep, and memory. Now each modification is explained further.

Sutra 1:7. [Facts of] right knowledge [are based on] direct cognition, inference, or testimony.

Pramana has three bases: direct perception, inference, and what Jnaneshwara calls “testimony or verbal communication from others who have knowledge.” All commentators say that this latter includes scriptural texts. Nevertheless, the first listed by Patanjali is pratyaksha–personal perception. This quite logical in a text on yoga, for the purpose of yoga is the gaining of direct knowledge that is “nearer than knowing, open vision direct and instant” (Bhagavad Gita 9:1). Next he lists logical inference (anumana)–either our own or another’s. Last comes scriptural testimony. So we see a hierarchy of values. Most valued is our personal insight, next is our logical thought or that of someone we are communicating with, and last is the written text. This is because a living process is always more valuable, and also because the written text may be defective in some way. So scriptures come last–a feature unique to Sanatana Dharma.

Sutra 1:8. Wrong knowledge is a false conception of a thing whose real form does not correspond to such a mistaken conception.

We all have experience of mistaken perception. Sometimes in a boat it looks and feels as if the shore is moving and the boat is standing still. Those of us who have ridden a train very much will recall feeling absolutely that the train we were sitting in was moving, only to find out that it was the train next to us that moved. We often “see wrong.” For example, I had a cousin that did not look like me at all. Yet, my friends would see him on the street and call out or start speaking to him–and the same would happen to me with his friends.

When as a child I went to the movies I would experience three things that really disturbed me at the time. First, when the sound came on I could clearly perceive that it came from speakers on two sides of the theater, yet after a short while the sound would not only seem to be coming from the screen, it would seem to come from the mouths of the actors! Second, in motion pictures where carriage or wagon wheels were shown, at certain speeds the spokes would appear to reverse their direction and be moving backwards. Third, if I had seen a movie or a feature before, when I saw it again it seemed to last only about half the time it had the first time. So I realized that sound, sight, and time sense could be altered and not be “real.” After a while I came to understand that most of my experience was viparyaya in some form.

The only remedy for viparyaya is to experience things as they really are. And that is one of the purposes of yoga. In fact, Shankara said that “inhibition of illusion must precede that of the others, since it is their root.”

Sutra 1:9. An image conjured up by words without any substance behind it is fancy [vikalpa].

Here “words” can mean internal thought as well external speaking–either by ourselves or by others. We all experience having a mixture of both right and wrong ideas about something; that is viparyaya as in the previous verse. But Vikalpa is completely without basis or substance. Shankara is fond of using the simile of the horns of a rabbit, since such things just do not exist. Interestingly, some time before I became a yogi I read a psychological study by a man who knew of a culture somewhere in the western hemisphere where the people all believe that rabbits have horns. He even went “rabbit watching” with them and was amazed that they all swore fervently to him that the rabbits he was seeing without horns really did have horns–they could see them.

Here we see the danger of lying. In time our minds will habitually function in vikalpa and we will be lying to ourselves. A hallucination is a form of vikalpa, as well. I knew a very skillful liar who occasionally had hallucinations so strong that those around him had to go along with it to keep him from going completely over the edge. One time he kept seeing flowers in the air and demanding of me what their “message” was. It was taxing on many levels, believe me. The only good thing was that when the hallucinations ended he would not remember having them, so when it was over it was over.

Sutra 1:10. That modification of the mind which is based on the absence of any content in it is sleep.

As already pointed out, in the Yoga Sutras nidra refers to dreamless sleep alone, the state in which there is “nothing” in the field of the mind to perceive. Why the term sushupti which specifically means dreamless sleep is not being used is hard to understand. Shankara says that in this verse nidra definitely does mean sushupti. However it may be, dreaming must be considered by Patanjali to be a form of vikalpa rather than true sleep.

Even though dreamless sleep is “absence of any content” it is not a void, for we remember it. Certainly we perceive it, as Shankara says: “Unless there had been a perception, there could hardly be a recollection. And when one wakes, one does recall, ‘I have slept well’ and so on. The recollection itself is a reflection of the perception that I have experienced something; unless there had been some experience, that reflection would not be there, nor could there reasonably be any memories about it.”

Dreamless sleep is often cited as proof of the witness-Self, for although there is no object of perception, yet something perceives this non-perception. And that something is the spirit whose very nature is consciousness–turiya, the fourth, eternal state of awareness. “Again, a man who has been asleep in an inner room, without any hint from outside however slight, has recollected immediately on waking ‘I have slept a long time,’ and this would otherwise be inexplicable.”

Sutra 1:11. Memory [smriti] is not allowing an object which has been experienced to escape.

Memory is both passive and active–sometimes memories arise without our intending them to, and at other times we intentionally bring them out from our inner mind, usually for a specific purpose. Vyasa says that we are evoking a samskara, an impression always present in the mind. Shankara says: “The perception arises, and then while dying away lays down a samskara in its possessor, the thinker. The samskara corresponds to its cause.”

Memory, of course, includes both intellectual and sensory recall. Patanjali, though, is interested only in the active act of will that is memory.

• Next: How to Achieve Chitta Vritti Nirodha
• Previously: The Five Fundamental Waves of the Mind
• Further reading: While reading this commentary, another outstanding commentary to read is The Science of Yoga, by I. K. Taimni.

For twenty centuries the birth of Christ has been celebrated differently by the different Christian sects. Many have counted the coming of Christmas as a time for exchanging nicely caparisoned, costly gifts. Many children look upon Christmas as the time for Santa Claus to give them new toys. They hang empty stockings around the chimney place. Santa is supposed to slip down the sooty opening of the chimney and fill the stockings with the longed-for articles. Some children remain awake and some dream, waiting for Christmas Morn.

Some hoary gentlemen who have lost interest in life perhaps look upon Christmas as a good time for a special home-cooked hot dinner. Some folks drink themselves into oblivion, expecting thus to celebrate the birth of Christ. American mothers and fathers are very fond of decorating the Christmas tree and loading it with gifts. The churches take Christmas as an occasion for great festivity.

Some religious institutions brace up and decorate their places and invite crowds, expecting big collections to enhance church activities. It is right to use business methods in order to advance the work of Christ in establishing Him in the Souls of men, but it is blasphemous to use Christ merely as a means for increasing business.

Some churches thank God intensely for sending His beloved Child to redeem the sin-laden world. Some serious-minded monks and nuns in the sequestered nooks of their monasteries celebrate Christmas more seriously by meditating on Christ.

What is the right way to celebrate Christmas?

The question is: Is it right to use the birth of Christ for material rejoicings involved in the exchange of gifts, Christmas dinners, and decorations, or is it right to worship the coming of Christ only in spirit?

Most of the superficial celebrators of Christmas turn Christmas into an expensive gift-exchanging, eating, and decorating occasion. What do they get out of Christmas except a few gifts, a few kindnesses and love behind those gifts, and a few passing joys? Very few people celebrate Christmas with the Christ thought. Very few know how to celebrate the coming of Christ by beholding Him born in the cradle of the new awakening of deep meditation.

Birthday celebrations are intended to make the person in question feel that His life should be useful to society. They also focus the attention of people on qualified individuals. Jesus does not need our celebration for His rejoicing or His upliftment, but we certainly need to celebrate the coming of Christ at least once every year in order to remember His exemplary, abiding, uplifting life, so that we may perchance pattern or remold our lives after His life, through all futurity. We need to celebrate the birthday of Christ every Christmas because His life is permanently useful and inspiring to all humanity in all Ages.

Millions of people are expecting to celebrate the coming Christmas purely as a social event. Very few are looking forward to it as the time for spiritually remembering Christ and for exchanging the lasting gifts of Soul and heart qualities.

What about you?

The question before you is: Are you going to use Christmas just as a romanticism of religious festivity, or are you going to celebrate Christmas by beholding the Christ love for all brother races and all living creatures? Are you going to celebrate the coming of Christ by really feeling the universal love, forgiveness, character, renunciation, and devotion of Christ within you? Unless you made the effort to really get acquainted with the ever-living Christ, born as new wisdom, new happiness within you, this coming Christmas season, I am afraid you will let the precious instructive Christmas season pass by without heed.

I am not telling you to omit the physical, social factor in connection with the Christmas celebration. What I want is that you should not, like millions of those who forget God, omit the paramount Spiritual factor in your Christmas celebration. Add to your social celebration of Christmas the celebration of bringing Christ a second time into your meditative consciousness.

Christ is only suggested in social Christmas festivities, but He is seen and felt as an everlasting, ever-joyous Fact in the cradle of Divine Ecstasy. Prepare yourself to celebrate Christmas in the real way, as humbly suggested in the following:

1. Prepare your heart so that you may say to those who crucify you daily with unkind actions and words and ingratitudes in exchange for the good you give them: “Father, teach me to love those, my error-stricken brethren, who know not what they do, so that with my love I may persuade them to better ways of living and not make them stronger in evil by driving them to it by unkindness.”
2. Make your heart an altar of Christ-love, which is in all races, loving them equally. Love all races as the uniform dwelling place of omnipresent Christ.
3. Forgive all your imaginary and real enemies even as Christ forgave His adversaries.
4. Make up your mind to love Christ as the joy of deep meditation, and thus celebrate the second coming of Christ, and a Spiritual Christmas, daily within yourself.
5. Make the unknown Christ known within yourself by seeing Him born a second time as the ever-new, ever-increasing joy of your daily deep meditation.
6. Govern all the actions of your life with the honesty and fearlessness of Jesus Christ.
7. Overcome the sorrow-producing temptations of the senses by the self-control of Jesus Christ and by developing a taste for all good things. Forego the temporary pleasures of the senses and pursue the lasting, true happiness of the Soul.
8. Behold the omnipresent joy of Christ in all men, in all Saints, in all creatures, in the star-peopled Cosmos, and in the temple of your own thoughts.
9. Remember that, although Christ was born once, still He can be born again every Christmas, or at any other time, in your meditation-awakened consciousness.
10. Give good for evil, understanding for misunderstanding, kindness for unkindness, peace for disquietude, calmness for restlessness, and lasting Bliss for sense pleasure.
11. Behold the omnipresent, ever-living Christ born anew in your devoted attention.
12. Do whatever you do with the thought and peace of Christ. This Christmas behold Christ born anew in the beauty of all Nature, in your awakened wisdom, in everything which wears true beauty, and in everybody who saturates himself with the fragrance of Christ-qualities.
13. Exchange Spiritual gifts by giving your outstanding good qualities to others who need them and by receiving the ennobling Soul-qualities of those who are great and who love you for your own good
14. Exchange gifts with the thought of Christ and the thought of giving Him the gift of your heart and receiving the gift of Himself on the Christmas tree of your calm consciousness, richly decorated and glistening with the Soul-qualities of all those you have met and loved. Through the portal of your meditation, let your imprisoned joy escape to, and rest in, the heart of Christ, which is in everything. Let your joy dance in the farthest planets, over the vastness of the blue, and n the nearest waves of your love. Then you will behold Christ cradled in every manifest thing.

More articles by Paramhansa Yogananda:

• How to Get Your Prayers Answered
• Ten Bits of Wisdom from Paramhansa Yogananda
• Creating Your Happiness

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Sutra 1:5. The modifications [vritti] of the mind are five-fold and are painful [klishta] or not painful [aklishta].

The five types of modification will be listed in the next verse, but right now Patanjali wants us to know that they all can be painful or not painful.

However, there is a whole other way of looking at these modifications, and that is held by both Vyasa and Shankara. It interprets klishta and aklishta as “tainted by the kleshas” and “untainted by the kleshas.” The kleshas are: ignorance, egotism, attractions and repulsions towards objects, and desperate clinging to physical life from the fear of death. They will be considered in detail in verses two through nine of the second section of the Yoga Sutras. So the modifications of the chitta can be either tainted (impure) or untainted (pure). Obviously this is going to determine their effect on us.

Vyasa says this: “The tainted [modifications] are caused by the five kleshas; they become the seed-bed for the growth of the accumulated karma seed-stock. The others are pure and are the field of Knowledge. They oppose involvement in the gunas. They remain pure even if they occur in a stream of tainted ones. In gaps between tainted ones, there are pure ones; in gaps between pure ones, tainted ones. It is only by mental processes that samskaras corresponding to them are produced, and by samskaras are produced new mental processes. Thus the wheel of mental process and samskara revolves. Such is the mind. But when it gives up its involvement, it abides in the likeness of the Self.” Commenting on Vyasa’s comment, Shankara says: “Ignorance and the other taints become the seed-bed for tainted mental processes. When these last appear, the karma seed-stock is near to ripening.”

Shankara relates this situation to yoga practice, saying: “Only by recourse to practice and detachment, which oppose them en bloc, does inhibition succeed; their mere number does not make inhibition impossible, though there is no effective means of inhibiting them one by one.” This is very important, because one of the tricks of the mind is to tell us that we need to “work up” to the right state or tackle our defects only one-by-one. But those who accept this wrong way of going about clearing our lives and consciousness end up failing completely–as was the ego’s intention when it suggested it so “reasonably.” Rather, Shankara tells us that yoga practice assaults the whole bundle of mental illusions at once, just as one army attacks another army en masse, not just soldier by soldier. This is heartening news, for it assures us that yoga acts as a general antidote to the poison of the kleshas, like a wide-spectrum antibiotic attacks all forms of infection at once.

Sutra 1:6. [The five kinds of modifications are] right knowledge [pramana], wrong knowledge [viparyaya], fancy [vikalpa], sleep [nidra], and memory [smritaya].

Each of these merits an individual consideration.

• Pramana includes the means of valid knowledge, logical proof, and the means of right perception. Although logical proof is listed here, it is usually held that pramana also includes experiential proof such as proven intuition or yogic perception that has been investigated and shown to be accurate. Although Taimni and most translators render this “right knowledge,” it is actually the means to right knowledge.
• Viparyaya is erroneous peception, wrong knowledge, illusion, misapprehension, and distraction of mind–the means to wrong knowledge. In Sankhya philosophy, the basis of Yoga, it is said that viparyaya is caused by ignorance (avidya), egoism (asmita), attachment (raga), antipathy (dwesha), and self-love in the sense of clinging to life (abhinivesha).
• Vikalpa is imagination, fantasy, mental construct, abstraction, conceptualization, hallucination, distinction, experience, thought, and oscillation of the mind.
• Nidra is sleep–either dreaming or dreamless–but in the Yoga Sutras it means dreamless sleep alone.
• Smriti is memory and recollection.

All mental phenomena fall into one of these classifications. It is interesting to see that just as there are five senses, so there are five modifications of the mind.

Next: Patanjali looks at each modification in turn.

Previously: Being Established in Our Own Inner Nature–Or Not

One of the foxes walks on the wall outside the Ashram office.

The fox deigns to pose for the camera.

Q: According to the Aquarian Gospel, Jesus was born at the beginning of the Piscean Age. The question is, in which Age would Jesus come during his Second Coming? Would it be The Aquarian Age? and would The Aquarian Age begin in 2012 December? I am just seeker of Truth and hope and pray to Almighty One to guide us all to complete truth and Wisdom.

The Piscean Age began 2,000 years ago, and the Aquarian Age in the year 2000. This is calculated according to the vernal equinox and the astrological point on which it falls.

As to the next birth of Jesus we will just have to wait and see and make sure we are not deceived. I have met three people claiming to be Jesus and one claiming to be the Virgin Mary! They were the embodiments of foolishness and ignorance. (One of the Jesuses was in an adulterous relationship with the Virgin Mary.)

God being present here and now to each one of us, we need not worry much over the future.

Yoga Sutra 1:3. Then the Seer [Drashta] is established in his own essential and fundamental nature [Swarupa].

Vyasa immediately comments and paraphrases: “Then the power-of-consciousness [chit-shakti] rests in its own nature, as in the state of release [moksha]. But when the mind is extraverted [turned outward], though it is so, it is not so.” That is, even though each of us always rests in his true nature, for it is inviolable, at the same time we do not so rest experientially–just the opposite, we are aware of and identify with just about everything else.

Shankara first says in consideration of this verse: “It has been said that yoga is inhibition of the mental processes, by which inhibition the true being of Purusha as the cognizer is realized.” It is a bit convoluted, but the following words of Shankara are very important: “Purusha is the cognizer of buddhi in the sense that he is aware of buddhi in its transformations as the forms of the mental processes. The nature of Purusha is simple awareness of them; the one who is aware is not different from the awareness. If the one who is aware were different from the awareness itself, he would be changeable and then would not be a mere witness who has objects shows to him.”

Self-forgetfulness is the root of all our problems, the essence of samsara itself. Consciousness (chaitanya) is our essential nature. When asked what the Self is, Sri Ramakrishna simply answered: “The witness of the mind.” We are the seer of our individual life in the same way that God is the Seer of cosmic life. Therefore Patanjali speaks of the Self as the Seer.

When the chitta remains in a state both free from modifications and from the state in which is is possible for modifications to occur, then the yogi is established in his swarupa–essential form or nature. In that state his swarupa is that which imparts to him perfect knowledge of himself. So it is not just Seeing, it is Knowing.

People are getting flashes or glimpses of their Self throughout their lives, but they are overshadowed and even eclipsed by their usual perceptions of the modifications of the chitta. That is why it is necessary for us to reach that state (sthiti) in which no modifications can take place, but we shall remain firmly in the consciousness of our Reality–just as does God.

1:4. In other states there is assimilation/identification [of the Seer] with the modifications [of the mind].

Outside the state of being centered fully in the Self, there is vritti sarupyam–such a close identity with the experiences of relative existence that the person seems to be assimilated by them, overshadowed and rendered completely forgetful by them, mistaking them for reality and for his Self-nature. This is the state of being “lost” from which we must become “saved.” But unlike popular religion (and all religions provide “saviors” of some sort), Yoga explains to us that we must save ourselves–through Yoga. “Therefore, become a yogi” (Bhagavad Gita 6:46).

Fortunately, we do not really change when this false identity occurs. As Shankara points out: “The apparent change is not intrinsic but projected [adhyaropita], like a crystal’s taking on the color of something put near it.”

Here is another paragraph from Shankara that I think is important both for its accuracy and for the fact of it being said by such an authority as he: “Therefore knowledge of objective forms, and memory, and its recall, and effort and desire and so on, are all essentially not-self [anatma], because they are objects of knowledge like outer forms, and because they exist-for-another [parartha] as is shown by their dependence on the body-mind aggregate for the manifestation of their forms and other qualities. So because they have dependence, and are impermanent and are accompanied by effort–for these and similar reasons it is certain that they are essentially not-self.” This is also important because it is identical with the teaching of Buddha on these points, showing that Buddha was a classical Sankhya Yogi and not a “Buddhist” at all.

There is a most important point that must be pointed out here. Patanjali tells us that we must bring the chitta, the mind-substance, into a state of pure clarity in which modifications can no longer be produced. Why does he not tell us to just jettison the mind and be rid of it? Because, as both Vyasa and Shankara state in their commentaries on this verse, the purusha has an eternal, a “beginningless relation,” with the mind. We have always had it and always will, so we must correct/perfect it to be freed from samsara. There is no other way–the way of the yogi.

• Next: The Five Fundamental Waves of the Mind
• Previously: Yoga in Four Words

A guru will lead any sort of man from a thorny path to the royal road. Such preceptors are of two kinds. One is the primary preceptor and the other, the secondary preceptor. Mind is the primary preceptor and the other, the secondary preceptor. One is not the preceptor of the other. He is only the secondary preceptor. The secondary preceptor is one who shows the water in the well. The guru who exists in the heart of all beings is the jagadguru.

Paramhansa Nityananda adamantly refused to be a “guru” to anyone in the popular sense of the term. He gave no “diksha” whatsoever, nor did he give “shaktipat” as do some who claim to be his disciples or of his “lineage.” We must keep this in mind when we read about gurus in the Chidakasha Gita, for he means something quite different from the usual concept. In this and subsequent aphorisms he is referring to a teacher of wisdom–particularly of sadhana–who shows the way to liberation and encourages and blesses those who follow the way.

The value of contact with such a person is beyond all calculation, yet the seeker–who should certainly be grateful to all of his teachers–must realize that it is his own effort, his own will, that will achieve his liberation. A teacher may give him the map to freedom and advise him about the journey, but he must traverse the route himself by his own inner power, which is divine power–atmic power. Ultimately, God alone is the Guru, of Whom we are an eternal and inseparable part. This Sadguru works from within and without us to bring about our liberation, but all along the way it is our assent and our effort that is needed.

• A guru will lead any sort of man from a thorny path to the royal road.

This has two aspects, one particular and one universal.

The particular one has to do with the spiritual climate of India at the time of Nityananda’s birth in India. The date of his birth is unknown, but we know from his conversations that he was an adult at the time of Swami Vivekananda (who left his body in 1902) and may have seen him. That means he was born right in the midst of the most hide-bound observations of caste–one rule of which was that only Brahmins could be gurus or even sannyasis, and that only male Brahmins could receive initiation or spiritual instruction of any kind.

The rule was fanatically followed, so much so that “low caste” and Moslem disciples of Yogiraj Shyama Charan Lahiri, who gave initiation freely to all who asked (including women–a scandal at the time), were extremely careful to hide the fact of their discipleship and would only come to see him when they knew no one would observe and report it. Once an advanced disciple of Yogiraj saw a man in whom he recognized great spiritual realization. He started following him, wanting to meet him, but the man rushed onward and eluded him. When he told of this to Lahiri Mahasaya, the guru told him that the man was one of his Moslem disciples who never came in contact with his Hindu disciples lest there be great trouble caused for the Yogiraj.

Examples of worthy teachers

Nityananda is telling us that a true and worthy guru/teacher will freely teach anyone who is sincere and willing to follow instruction–that he will care nothing about their background or their past. A mentally disturbed man tried to kill Swami Sivananda, who forgave him and asked him to live in the ashram and do sadhana. A man was hired by jealous Brahmin pandits to poison Sri Brahma Chaitanya of Gondawali because of his open attitudes and ways. Knowing that the man would be beaten and perhaps killed if he failed to do so, the saint knowingly took the poison and swallowed it, commenting that he did so for the safety of the would-be assassin. Horrified at killing a saint–one who was so merciful he would die to help him–the man ran away. Brahma Chaitanya asked people to run after and catch him, but they were unable. When they related their failure to him, the saint said: “That is too bad. I wanted to give him initiation!” By his yoga powers the saint did not die, but he developed chronic asthma.

The universal aspect of this statement is the fact that a worthy teacher can help anyone who wishes to change, for the divine Self is within all, and the moment anyone desires higher life he is ready and able for it. In the lives of great yogis we find examples of every kind of degradation being dispelled by their merciful teaching. What value would they be if this was not the case? Yoga, being based on the eternal nature of every human being can free those who diligently practice it. Yogananda had an alcoholic disciple whom he told to sit with a bottle and take a swig and then practice yoga for a while and take another swig, and so on. In time there were no swigs–only yoga. Sri Ramakrishna cured several alcoholics in the same way, though his approach was for them to get just barely tipsy and then meditate. The principle here is that those who have dug themselves into a hole can climb out if they have a competent teacher. This is true for all. The sole factor is their intention and will.

• Such preceptors are of two kinds. One is the primary preceptor and the other, the secondary preceptor. Mind is the primary preceptor and the other, the secondary preceptor. One is not the preceptor of the other. He is only the secondary preceptor.

The yogi’s mind is his primary teacher, for it is his applied will that ultimately delivers him. The external teacher is only secondary, and can never replace the mind-guru. Nor is he the guru of the student’s mind–that is the action of the Self upon the seeker’s mind. (Mind here includes buddhi as well as manas.) We seek God because we intuit the reality of finding God. As Saint Paul said: “He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him” (Hebrews 11:6). This is a function of our own mind alone–no external force can bring it about or cause us to intuit these truths.

Only this morning I heard this read: “Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son” (Luke 1:31). These are the words of the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary. For years, when I was not a yogi, I used to wonder why the angel would say “conceive in thy womb,” for where else would conception take place? But when I understood the Gospels as mystery-dramas symbolizing the Christing of each individual, showing the path from the “conception” to the “resurrection” and “ascension” of the Divine Consciousness, then I understood.

It is possible for conception to take place outside the womb. Such a conception is abnormal and cannot lead to birth, but it can occur. I knew a woman who conceived in the fallopian tube and the embryo had to be surgically removed. In the same way “spirituality” can be conceived in the intellect and the person becomes an avid student of spiritual books and other forms of teaching–and talking. Or someone can “conceive” in their emotion and be swept along on a flood of “God loves me; I love God” and externalized and externalizing activities. In India people rhapsodize about Krishna’s “restless eyebrows,” Lakshmi’s pink feet, and Durga’s “parrot-beak nose.” I knew a man who was scarred all over from running through thick bramble bushes, chasing Krishna in “ecstasy.” What silliness–so unworthy of the rishis of India. In time those who have wrongly conceived will burn out and get bored with it all, and their subsequent births will be completely unaffected by any of it.

The birth of consciousness within

The conception of spirit-consciousness must take place in the core of our being, and grow to “term” in the buddhi illumined by intuition. We must conceive in the “womb” of our own consciousness, otherwise nothing will come of it.

We also learn from this aphorism that we must work with our mind, developing its ability to guide us. Obsession with an external teacher will not do the needful. All the guru-puja in the world will avail nothing. “Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). It all begins, continues, and ends right there in the “womb” of our own mind, our own Sadguru.

• The secondary preceptor is one who shows the water in the well.

But the student is the one who brings out the water from the well, for it is his own Self that is the well! Certainly a teacher can instruct in the way to access the water, but the student does the rest.

• The guru who exists in the heart of all beings is the jagadguru.

The Supreme Self (Paramatman) and individual Self (jivatman) alone are the “world-teacher,” for the impulse to seek enlightenment comes only from deep within each of us. And it is our will alone that maintains our sadhana.

What about those that call themselves “Jagadguru” or let their groupies do so? Yes. What about them?

Further reading:

• The Chidakasha Gita–Complete Text
• Paramahansa Nityananda–A Brief Life